Barbara+Auer

On September 28, 1929, 29-year-old Barbara Peters Auer died in Chicago from complications of an illegal abortion performed at an unknown place.

The person or persons responsible were never identified or prosecuted, so we can't know if Barbara availed herself of one of the plethora of physicians and midwives practicing abortion in Chicago at the time.

Keep in mind that things that things we take for granted, like antibiotics and blood banks, were still in the future. For more about abortion in this era, see [|Abortion in the 1920s].

During the first two thirds of the 20th Century, while abortion was still illegal, there was a massive drop in maternal mortality, including mortality from abortion. Most researches attribute this plunge to improvements in public health and hygiene, the development of blood transfusion techniques, and the introduction of antibiotics. Learn more [|here].

  For more on pre-legalization abortion, see [|The Bad Old Days of Abortion]

Source:


 * [|Homicide in Chicago Interactive]

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